


combust

by orphan_account



Category: Winner (Band)
Genre: M/M, Mild Sexual Content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 06:16:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7923724
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kissing Seunghoon on live television doesn’t bother Seungyoon at all. The fact that he can’t seem to write songs anymore, does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	combust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [girltalk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/girltalk/gifts).



> Originally written for ~winnerexchange @ lj.

Taehyun is the one who deserves the punishment. It’s all his fault, when you get down to it - he’s the one who lost the head-to-head wastepaper basket challenge, he’s the one who should bear the blame. A few years ago they all would have _jumped_ at the chance to look like a hero in front of the cameras - but that time is long past, and Taehyun is a little shit.

It’s the last show on their schedule for at least another month. Somehow, despite their manager’s lackluster pep talk, they’re not doing so hot. They’ve already been recording for three hours: the PDs keep stopping, either to fix Jinwoo’s hair or redo Taehyun’s makeup or take Minho’s cellphone away. It’s getting late, and halfway through the interview segment Seunghoon fell asleep. Seungyoon feels a little sympathetic, but not much. When he pinched Seunghoon in the side it was with a vindictive sort of pleasure he should probably spend an afternoon unpacking with a trained therapist. Instead, he smiled into the camera.

Taehyun stares from the punishment cards, to the cameras, back to the punishment cards. His face is a perfect picture of sad desperation, and the host eats it up.

“Come on,” she says encouragingly, “help him out.” Taehyun is a study in heartbreak. They collectively examine their metaphorical cuticles. Somewhere, a fangirl is crying.

They’re about to get away with it - Taehyun is breaking, he can’t pretend at emotion that long - until Seungyoon catches their manager off to the side, waving his arms in what appears to be a Hail Mary effort to save his career. He slowly points from Taehyun, to Seungyoon, from Taehyun, to Seungyoon. His eyes widen significantly. Seungyoon sighs.

(He has an image problem, apparently, in that people don’t like his image. They’re working on it.)

“My hero,” Taehyun says, fluttering his lashes. Seungyoon reminds himself to cut Taehyun’s lines from their next song.

He makes an exaggerated face has he draws a card, and then blanches with his whole body. The host shrieks at the top of her lungs, more delighted than she has any right to be: “Kiss the member to your left,” she announces, and pokes a lacquered finger into - _of course_ \- Seunghoon’s chest.

“Your dream come true,” Seunghoon mutters, too softly for anyone else to hear. Seungyoon snorts, and then, before he can think, before his stomach can churn, pulls him in close.

It’s not a great kiss. It’s not a bad one, either, but it’s certainly not the best they’ve ever had. Seunghoon’s lips are dry and the cameraman, big and burly, hovers three inches from their embrace. Seungyoon tries to move away after just a moment - he’s the one that tries to shy away, that tries to ignore what they both agreed was in the past, but Seunghoon’s always had a flair for the dramatic and Seungyoon can’t back down. When Seunghoon surges up, holding Seungyoon’s shoulders tight like manacles, Seungyoon lets his eyes fall shut for the lenses; when Seungyoon reels back afterwards, one step, two steps, _stunned_ , the host claps in delighted approval.

Seungyoon makes a show of wiping his mouth on his sleeve. Seunghoon looks triumphant.

His lips feel chapped. Seunghoon tastes different, now.

 

They have five songs due on Monday. They had five songs due last Monday, and the Monday before that. Their submissions keep being sent back, with notes attached too cryptic to understand, or too vitriolic to linger on. _More cymbals_ (the song contained no cymbals). _Fewer violins_ (again). _I can’t picture Jiyong singing this_ (Seungyoon doesn’t think CEO Yang remembers debuting them).

They manage to scrape together three and a half new songs over the week. Seungyoon shoos Taehyun out of the studio Friday night, 2 AM: “You need your beauty sleep,” he half-grins, half-sneers. He tracks the way Taehyun’s shoulders slump, right angle to obtuse, as he slips into the elevator. Seungyoon wants to follow him, out of this basement and out of this building and away into the dark, open night. But: they have three and a half songs, and: they need five, and: CEO Yang named him leader, so: he cannot fail.

He falls asleep somewhere in between five and six AM. The computer clock says 6:30 when he jolts awake. There’s nothing waiting for him on the screen. There was nothing in his brain last night, or at least, nothing worth saving. He and Taehyun composed a death elegy for CEO Yang, but he doesn’t think he’ll appreciate that.

He had a dream last night. He can’t remember what it was about, except that he woke up feeling flushed and anxious, almost like he should be apologizing to someone. Who, he can’t remember. When Seunghoon comes in, seven AM with a big smile and a bigger coffee, Seungyoon’s face feels warm, and he can’t figure out why.

 

Minho and Taehyun pull two songs out of their asses Sunday night, running hot on adderall and desperation. They’re given a temporary reprieve, having proved too underwhelming for disciplinary action.

“And what do you have?” CEO Yang asks Seungyoon. There’s blood in the water.

“Nothing.” It’s rust in his mouth.

CEO Yang doesn’t say anything. The back of Seungyoon’s neck prickles.

 

The program broadcasts Monday.

Reactions play out one of three ways:

_1) I MEASURED THE DISTANCE BETWEEN THEIR LIPS…. SO CLOSE… [+80, -220]_

 

_2) dude congrats on you & Lee, consider this my rsvp_

 

_fuck off soojung_

3) _LOL did you see the vid yet? Looks like fans are really liking it!!!_

 

_haha, yeah. kind of weird._

 

  _Haha._

_Also Taehyun wants to know if you took his foot cream_

 

Seungyoon watches the video three times.

Then thirty-two more.

He goes back into the studio, and doesn’t leave for another ten hours. Minho sends him a fan edit (‘SEUNGHOON SEUNGYOON VANESSA CARLTON A THOUSAND MILES WINNER VIDEO GOOD’), which Seungyoon watches in Incognito.

He writes nothing.

 

They’re back at the TV station. The lights are hot, but Seunghoon feels hotter. His mouth covers Seungyoon’s, their bodies flush one against the other. He knows, Seungyoon _knows_ that they can’t be doing this, that there’s a camera filming everything, that the others are watching them, seeing _everything_ -

“Just do it,” Seunghoon is saying, and that isn’t fair, his mind is lifting things from the past, that isn’t _fair_ , “just do it for me,” his thumb is in Seungyoon’s mouth now and even as Seungyoon wets its tip with his tongue he feels a familiar acid in his stomach, this isn’t fair.

They’re alone now, or maybe the others were never there: it’s the dorms from when they were trainees, the mattress just as stiff and uncomfortable on his back as it was back then, but now it’s the showers, the tile slick underneath his feet, the humidity almost too much to bear, but now it’s any dark corner they can find, any practice room with the pretense of a lock, anything with enough privacy to get Seunghoon on his knees and Seungyoon with his head thrown back, biting his lip so hard it bruises-

“You’re the one that said we can’t,” he tries to say, but he can’t get anything out because Seunghoon swallows up his words into his mouth and he’s so familiar that it’s alien, the way his skin goes warm under Seungyoon’s fingertips, the way his throat goes tight and hollow-

He wakes up half-hard, a melody wound around his brain. It’s the first time in a week he’s had any trace of inspiration. Stumbling around the bedroom, he kicks around his and Jinwoo’s collective debris in search of something, anything to write on. Giving up, he goes into the kitchen, groping around in the 4 AM light for a menu and a Sharpie.

He’s got half a bar down when Seunghoon, bleary, smiling, slouches in. “Hey,” he says, his voice scratchy, Seungyoon’s forgotten that it gets like that at night, “what are you doing up so early?”

Seunghoon was in his dream, he knows that, but he also knows that the song is slipping away. He bends over the paper, trying to pin it down before it vanishes. “I, uh, I couldn’t sleep,” he lies. “Why are you?”

Seunghoon wrinkles his nose. “Minho’s snoring again. I figured it was this or smother him to death. What do you think?”

Snorting, Seungyoon leans his hips against the countertop. “I think there’s an easier way to get more lines in a song.”

“Are you saying you could be persuaded?” Seunghoon’s voice is low, hot, just for a second, but it jolts something inside of Seungyoon. He’s like a mannequin tied up on a string, laying slack and unaware until someone ( _don’t fool yourself_ ) jerks him to life. He looks up, an expression of what he hopes is cool apathy on his face: Seunghoon shoots him a big, goofy smile, and turns to grab the tin of coffee from the shelf behind him. He chatters on, unconcerned, getting Seungyoon up to speed on a drama he stopped watching five episodes ago. Seungyoon lets him talk, lulled by the lilt of his voice, the burr of his accent. He wants to choke on it.

The melody is gone. He doesn’t care. He watches Seunghoon’s throat.

 

Still, it takes him a while to catch on.

It’s not a constant thing - he doesn’t lay awake at night pining for the days when Seunghoon used to jerk him off in the practice rooms, or rut against him the showers until Seungyoon had to push his knuckles over his mouth to keep the other trainees from hearing. If he pines, it’s for having someone to consistently get him off. He pines for that a lot, especially when he has the room to himself. But the sight of Seunghoon doesn’t take his breath away - not that it ever did, but especially not now, not since they stopped.

Except that it keeps happening.

Not the kissing, for all that Seunghoon spends the next week puffing his lips out in a weird blowfish grimace every time Seungyoon walks by. But that feeling, the cotton-mouthed, belly-twisted, weak-kneed glut of want and something a little heavier; it keeps coming back. It’s like he’s nineteen again, hormonal and strung-out, except that now he’s taller and has better hair and bears the weight of a dubiously successful pop group upon his shoulders. He has better things to worry about than what was, at best, a mediocre publicity stunt, and, at worst, fodder for the types of fan stories Minho likes to read out loud when they get drunk.

It wasn’t even that good a kiss.

He locks himself in the studio. He’ll put it in a song, he tells himself, all of this heart pounding blushing useless _shit_ , and then his feelings will be excised from his idiot brain and onto a .wav file where it will languish and corrupt and eventually die. Maybe CEO Yang will think it’s the best thing he’s ever written. Maybe it will make him enough money that he can pay Seunghoon to take a vow of chastity.

The play button stares at him. Seungyoon stares back.

Three hours later, the program asks him if he wants to save his track. He has recorded 0.0000 minutes of audio. Feeling vindictive, he force quits.

 

He takes a cold shower, which doesn’t work. He takes a hot shower, which works, except that he ends up using all of the hot water and has to deal with Taehyun griping about manners and common courtesy and his pores needing time to open, stop laughing, Seungyoon. He plays at contriteness as he towels off his hair. By the time Taehyun finishes Seungyoon has managed to calm himself down: _it’s nothing_ , he repeats, moving over so that Taehyun can shake his hair out over the sink, _you’re worrying about nothing_.

That, unfortunately, is Seunghoon’s cue to saunter into the room, hair still bed-tousled, eyes dark, towel hanging low on his hips. (If his hair looks more Muppet wig than human, and if the towel is patterned with brightly quacking ducks - Seungyoon’s libido doesn’t seem to mind.) Seungyoon towels his hair hard enough to rub the skin red.

“Hey guys,” says Seunghoon, “we showering together now? That’s cool. Save the planet.” He flashes a peace sign. Seungyoon stares hard at his reflection in the mirror. Maybe he should start considering his own pores. “We should get Jinwoo in here. Soap each other up.”

He wriggles his eyebrows. It’s highly inappropriate.

Seunghoon’s torso is long, and Seunghoon can remember its texture against his tongue.

“Get dressed,” he barks at the mirror, “we have an interview in an hour.” He marches out of the bathroom, his spine erect, his dick halfway there. He can feel Seunghoon and Taehyun looking at him as though he’s sprouted two heads. He doesn’t care. He will never look at Seunghoon again, never, at least until he’s got this under control or he’s dead. Whichever comes first. He hopes it’s death.

 

Why Seunghoon, he asks himself. He can’t come up with an answer. They’ve been bandmates for three years, friends for five; the - whatever it was they had between them - is just a blip on their timeline, a few months of whatever politicians call it, _youthful indiscretion_. He’s been with girls since then, a few boys, too, and he wasn’t picturing Seunghoon the whole time, not even a little bit.

He agreed with what Seunghoon had said back then, “we have to think about our futures” - he’d nodded, and they’d hugged, which felt awkward, and then shook hands, which felt worse. They’re friends now, _just_ friends, and it’s a role they’ve settled into with such ease sometimes it’s like there wasn’t anything there to begin with. _I’ve moved on_ , Seungyoon tells himself, and he can almost believe it.

Except Seunghoon smiles, and Seunghoon laughs, and Seunghoon makes the stupidest joke Seungyoon has heard in his life and he _wants_ him, he really does. He doesn’t want to hold his hand or call him beloved, or whatever they say on those stupid dramas Jinwoo and Minho watch. He doesn’t want a _boyfriend_. He just wants- What _does_ he want?

There’s something bubbling inside of him, some alchemical mixture has been activated in his veins, a mix of lust and exhaustion and maybe something else, something a shade darker. His blood is waiting to combust, and Seunghoon holds the match.

He’s not sure what happens when he burns all away.

 

Sometimes he catches Seunghoon looking at him. Not just lately, but over the past few years, as Winner, as Team A, as best friends and nothing more. It’s not quite the way he used to look at him, a shade too light for tenderness, but it still makes Seungyoon’s insides curdle. Seunghoon always smiles then, just the right moment so that Seungyoon isn’t sure if he imagined it or not. And then Taehyun will punch his arm, or Jinwoo will call his name, and it will vanish from his mind until the next time, three months and a lifetime later.

‘You’re the one who pulled away,’ he wants to say, but he agreed, didn’t he? And besides, he doesn’t care, neither of them do, so what’s the point?

 

Minho starts staying in the studio with him. He thinks that the others are sending him along as a kind of minder. Jinwoo’s been making pointed comments about his lack of sleep, and Taehyun keeps offering him the use of his undereye cream, half-catty, half-concerned. Minho is casual about it - they do this a lot, stay up late at night, quiet except for the tap of their keyboards and the hum of their hard drives, and for a few hours Seungyoon can pretend like this is normal, like the world is still spinning the right way, like he hasn’t been thinking about the way Seunghoon’s hair smells for the last half hour. It feels good, _right_ for the first time in ages, until:

“What’s going on with you?” Minho asks. He’s looking over the frenzied scribbles Seunghoon has been trying to pass off as composition with a pained half-grimace. “No offense-", he ignores Seungyoon’s snort, “but this isn’t… great.”

“Thanks for the feedback,” Seungyoon mutters, staring down an eighth note as though it just insulted his mother. “I’ll take it to heart.”

“Fuck off,” Minho says without conviction. “If I gave you songs like that you would have reamed me out for an hour. You _did_ , like two months ago.”

Seungyoon rips a sheet out of his notebook and crumples it up. “I know.” He lobs it at the trash can, missing by a foot. “Shit.”

They’re quiet, then, Seungyoon staring at his notebook, Minho clicking through random sites. Upstairs, Seunghoon is teaching Taehyun and Jinwoo new choreography. The image of Seunghoon, tank riding up, torso slick with sweat, chases any thought of music out of Seungyoon’s head. He doesn’t realize Minho has spoken until it’s a minute too late.

“Dude,” Minho says, and it’s the most awkward Seungyoon has heard him, he can’t help but look, “you know that- I mean, with your writing, and stuff- You push yourself so hard-” He’s flustered, it’s the first time Seungyoon has seen anything like it. “We’re here, and all that stuff.”

Seungyoon wants to laugh, but he can’t get the words out. “Thanks,” he manages, a small sound. Minho shrugs it off, but he looks a little relieved. There’s guilt in Seungyoon’s gut, but he can’t say why. They manage to put together a song - it’s 90% Minho’s, but CEO Yang doesn’t reject it, and it feels like a stay of execution.

 

It’s grown into a full-blown- A full blown what?

He can’t say it, not even in his head. An _infatuation_ , his mind unhelpfully supplies, except that makes it seem like he’s a 18th century Victorian gentleman (and what would that make Seunghoon?). But an _infatuation_ is better than a schoolkid, infantile _crush_. He’s too old and too not a 50s teenybopper for anything like that.

It was just that he hasn’t kissed anyone in so long, and Seunghoon has soft skin, and he’s really hard up. An infatuation. That’s it. Nothing a good jerk session won’t fix. He will make this stop happening. He will.

When he closes his eyes, he forces his mind towards the roughly-defined, barely-there fantasies which usually do the trick. The girl who manned the gas station in his neighborhood with the tight, tight shirts; his ninth-grade teacher, hands long and calloused, smile a shade cruel; ‘stranded on a tropical island with SNSD.

And yet - after a few minutes, each time, they shift, so that Kwon Yuri’s hands become more calloused, so that gas station girl’s hair becomes a little shorter, a little more coarse between his fingers.

Seunghoon’s mouth is wet around his dick, and he looks up at Seungyoon with wide eyes, bigger pupils, hot and strung-out and a little desperate. It shoots straight to Seungyoon’s cock, and he thrusts himself forward, suddenly, aggressively; a small, fetid part of him relishes the frantic choking sounds from below, the way Seunghoon’s fingers scramble against his hips, leaving red marks he’ll have to explain in the morning. Even as his eyes grow damp, he stares up at Seungyoon, gaze rapturous as a supplicant come to worship.

Seungyoon comes with a groan. It’s hot in the room, stickier now, too, and he holds onto the sheets until his heart stops racing except it doesn’t stop, he doesn’t think it will ever slow down-

“ _Fuck_ ,” he mutters, and lets out a long, shuddering breath.

(“Dude,” says Jinwoo, shielding his eyes, “it’s four in the morning.” Seungyoon ignores him.)

 

Their interviewer asks them if they’re worried that iKON is outselling them 2:1. Seungyoon laughs, and says they’re so proud of them. That night, they get drunk.

Seungyoon is usually a sullen drunk, but tonight he’s running on empty and they’re pulling straight from the bottle. It moves from his throat to his stomach in one fell swoop, and he finds that the world’s glinting a little, right around the edges of his eyes. He smiles at Taehyun, at Jinwoo, at the world, and mostly it seems all good.

Seunghoon is drunk, too. Not the damp, squiggly around the edges drunk he gets when they’re promoting, or the too bright, glossy-eyed manner he has during tours or photoshoots in timezones two days too wrong. This is a drunk Seungyoon has never seen before. It turns Seunghoon’s body languid and his manner loose. Here, he drapes against Taehyun, twin cheshires; here, he bats at Jinwoo’s shoulders, laughing as he’s pushed away. Here he cuts his eyes towards Seungyoon, and there’s something so clear in his gaze that it turns Seungyoon’s throat to ice.

They drink too fast, Minho and Taehyun and Jinwoo, buoyed by their flatlining album sales and the reporter’s narrow-eyed questions, and by the time they fall asleep it’s only pushing two. Seungyoon and Seunghoon lie amongst the bodies, trading the bottle with every pass of the soccer match Jinwoo insisted on pulling up. Ten minutes into the second half and Seungyoon’s team (the United Arab Emirates, why, he couldn’t say) is losing. He drinks for every missed goal, which is a lot, so that by the time they’re at stoppage time the world has gone from glinting to shining gold.

Seunghoon is lit up like the sun, and Seungyoon tells him so, in a voice so stumbling and happy he’d never recognize it as his own. “I could use that in a song,” he says, “and when the reporters ask- when the reporters _asked_ I could say- I would say it was about a girl,” and that thought, Seunghoon as a girl, _Seunghoon_ , makes him tumble over laughing, his head bumps on the floor but he can’t feel it anymore, he can’t feel anything.

Seunghoon’s response is a sly kitten smile. It makes Seungyoon’s insides twist up, or maybe that’s the 100 proof burning in his stomach. It takes him a moment to realize that the currents shooting up his arms aren’t sparks or coagulated blood but Seunghoon’s fingers, tracing his veins with a delicacy that makes him want to vomit.

He doesn’t realize Seunghoon has kissed him until he’s already kissing back. In the morning, he thinks that it’s a dream.

 

When he wakes up Seunghoon is gone. He’s left a song in Seungyoon’s head, though; it’s not a fair trade.

 

Seunghoon has been watching him. Seungyoon has been looking away. He’s gotten what he came for: music, and praise, and something a little ashen in the pit of his stomach, just a little bit of tragedy to keep the hits coming.

 

“We have to talk,” Seunghoon says. “about that night.”

Seungyoon shrugs. “We got drunk,” he says, his voice carefully casual. “It happens.”

“ _Seungyoon_ ,” Seunghoon says; it’s almost a growl, but Seungyoon kind of likes that. He smiles, half involuntarily, and Seunghoon’s eyes darken.

 

Here is what Seunghoon says: _I can’t._

Here is what Seunghoon does: his hands on Seungyoon’s hips, he pushes his mouth against Seungyoon’s so roughly he sees stars. Seunghoon licks the protests from his lips; Seungyoon bites him back, and shoves his tongue into his mouth.

It’s fast - Seunghoon is stronger now, strong enough to leave a stripe of fingerprints around his upper arm. He kisses like he’s practiced a lot in these last few years, and Seungyoon has an tightness in his throat, a jealous bile not unfamiliar. He tries to bite back, to leave a punishment, or a mark, or a warning shot, _maybe he’s yours now but once he was halfway mine_ , but Seunghoon pushes him back easily, so that his head hits the back of shower tile and leaves him with a dizzying, euphoric burst of stars beneath his eyelids.

It only takes a few minutes for Seunghoon to come. He sags against Seungyoon’s shoulders, guiding Seungyoon’s wrist through those last few tugs, an agonizingly slow stroke that shreds his throat into half-sobbing gasps. His eyes are closed tight, against the bathroom light or the sight of Seungyoon, or something else entirely. It coats Seungyoon’s fingers, his palms, the front of his jeans. He feels marked, and hates himself for the low, belly-hot sting of pride.

He doesn’t finish, but Seunghoon kisses him, short, sweet, and in a cowardly way it feels like enough.

 

“Seungyoon,” Seunghoon says after it’s over, “I can’t. We can’t.”

“I know,” Seungyoon says, his voice so light he could drift away. “Of course I know.”

They hug, which is awkward, and shake hands, which is worse. They laugh, and go upstairs, and hang out with Jinwoo. They avoid each other’s eyes for the rest of the night.

 

He writes a song about it the next day. It’s good. Better than good; it’s the best he’s written in months, according to Minho and Taehyun. To Seungyoon’s ears it’s bland and predictable, doused of any fire which still licks away at his insides, a low and steady burn. CEO Yang loves it.

It’s a b-side on their next album. Seungyoon tells people it was about a girl.  



End file.
